see that they were all Red-crests. I had now got into deeper
water, and went as hard as I could manage without splashing,
but they swam steadily away, and I must have gone fully half
a mile before I had gained 100 yards on them. Still they had
not shown the smallest signs of suspicion (and I knew their
ways well), but were swimming gaily on en tnasst, head to wind
as they often will on cold windy mornings. On I went ; I had
a long heavy English swivel, carrying a pound of shot (No. I
I had in) ; there were between two and three thousand of them
as closely packed as they could swim. I began to bet with
myself that I should not get less than one hundred ; never had
I had quite such a chance, taking it all round ; number of fowl
close packing, rumps all towards me, my best gun. I was certainly
within seventy yards of the hindennost birds ; I calculated
to get within about forty yards of these, and fire over their heads
into the centre of the flock. They were close packed and backs
to me, so that there was little to gain, and possibly a great deal
to lose by flushing them. I was within fifty yards when again
I grounded ; had I even then fired at once, I must have made
a very large bag, but I thought I knew that this was only the
point of a mound, (a tiny island in most years) and I wasted
some precious moments struggling to get over it with the
paddles. The nearest birds must have been seventy yards distant,
before, seeing I was hard and fast, I snapped an ammunition
cap on a little pistol I always carried for the purpose, and
raked them as they rose. The next instant there was a whole
line of birds fluttering on the water—seven dead, and twenty-one
winged. I recovered every one of them, but it was noon before
I bagged the last, and if I had had a desperate hard six hours
work, I hardly remember any six hours which I more thoroughly
enjoyed ; and that, although it was nearly a week before, with my
raw hands, I could touch paddle or quant again.
When much molested they are shy and very difficult to work,
but fresh fowl, that have not been before shot at that season, can
always be easily approached within swivel range, though they usually
keep just outside the limits of efficiency of ordinary fowling
pieces. There was a deep reach in the Jumna not many miles above
its junction with the Chambal, where every year I used to find a
good flock of some forty or fifty of these birds. In an ordinary
small native ferry boat it was simply impossible, with an
ordinary charge in an ordinary double gun, to do anything
with these. Up stream or down stream they could swim every
bit as fast as it was possible to drive the old tub ; and up stream
anil down stream, as you pressed them, they would swim, always
keeping as nearly as possible about sixty yards from the boat;
but I used each year to get a few by a long shot out of a No. 8
bore, with double B. Eley's green cartridge, and one year I
brought the punt down, and coming down stream on them,
against wind, bagged nearly half the party. Before the first
shot was fired nothing would make them rise ; afterwards, for
days, they would not let anything approach within a hundred
yards of them without rising.
Dresser tells us that " it does not dive* but like the Mallard,
when feeding in shallow water, it turns end up, and stretching
down its neck, reaches and plucks up the water plants on which
it feeds." I should like to know where he obtained this valuable
information. The fact is, that though you may, at times,
see it dibbling about the water like Teal and Shovellers, or again
feeding as he describes, its normal habit and practice is to
dive, and I have watched flocks of them, scores of times, diving,
for an hour at a time, with a pertinacity and energy
unsurpassed by any other wild fowl. Examine closely their
favorite haunts, and you will find these to be almost invariably
just those waters in which tliey must dive for their
food. Deep broads, where the feathery water-weed beds do
not reach within several feet of the surface, not the comparatively
shallow ones, where the same weeds (the character of
their leaves, however, changed by emergence) lie in thick
masses coiled along the surface.
Although mainly vegetarians, they indulge more in animal
food than the Pochard. I have found small frogs, fish-spawn,
shells, both land and water, insects, grubs, worms, and on three
or four occasions tiny fish, mixed with the vegetable matter,
sand and pebbles that their stomachs contained. Usually at
least two-thirds of their food is vegetable, leaves, stems, fleshy
rhizomes, rootlets, &c, of arrow grasses, Sagittarias, Horn
Worts, and the like ; but at times they feed largely on the
animal substances above enumerated, and I examined one
male that had entirely gorged itself on fishes about an inch
in length. Probably^ it is owing to this that these ducks
vary so in quality as comestibles ; sometimes they are really
first-rate, (they are almost always very fat), while at others
they have a rank, marshy, froggy flavour, that it requires
lemon and red pepper in abundance to neutralize.
Though constantly seen feeding by day, when in suitable
situations, they also feed a good deal during the night, and
those whose day quarters happen for the time to be waters
that yield little food, leave these at dusk for more prolific
haunts. Perhaps they mostly move at that time ; certainly
you very commonly shoot them when out flighting, and at
that time they are usually in pairs or small parties, very rarely
in large flocks.
They are strong but heavy fliers, and they are slow in getting
under weigh ; but for some reason, which I have failed to
discover, (for in daylight they do not rise very perpendicularly),
they are very seldom caught in the standing net,
* The italics are mine.
I I